Geopolitics: What It Is, Areas Of Study, And Main References
Politics is subject to many factors, and one of those that is often overlooked is geography.
Geopolitics is responsible for studying this peculiar relationship We will see what its definition is, its characteristics and what its importance has been throughout history, studying some specific examples from different governments.
Geopolitics consists of the study of the relationship between the geographical conditions of a specific place and its weight in the political decisions that are made and that affect these territories Geography means both the physical conditions of the land and the human distribution on it, that is, the configuration of the different states and other administrations. In other words, geopolitics tries to explain why certain political events happen in specific territories.
The geographical aspects that are fundamentally taken into account when talking about geopolitical aspects are the lands that belong to each country and also the waters of each nation, or international waters. It is essential to know the history of each country as well as the diplomatic relations it has had with the rest of the territories in order to understand the impact of a given political decision from a geopolitical perspective.
In addition to history, other disciplines that should inform this study are economics, practically inseparable from politics and its decisions, sociology to take into account the behaviors of a certain society, political science, which underlies the decisions made by rulers, and the aforementioned geography, to know the exact area of our planet on which we want to study political behavior.
Currently the concept of geopolitics is used to encompass everything the set of political relations between different countries, although the origins of the term were much more complex. Below we can take a brief tour of history, from when the word itself was coined, to the present day.
History of geopolitics
Although the origin of geopolitics is somewhat disputed, the truth is that most opinions agree that it emerged at the end of the 19th century or the beginning of the 20th century. In the first case, it is stated that it was a geographer from Sweden who referred to that term for the first time, while other researchers attribute this merit to a group of German political scientists. This divergence is not particularly relevant to the history of geopolitics, so it does not pose a major problem.
The truth is The term began to gain importance with the arrival of the 1930s of the last century, and it did so at the hands of Nazism, so geopolitics was not free from controversy at first. It was Karl Haushofer, a German soldier, geographer and politician, who was in charge of developing this discipline and thus using it to draw up the strategies to be followed by Hitler and the Nazi army during the development of the Second World War.
This association between geopolitics and National Socialism resulted in the abandonment of the term once the war ended. It took the 70s for it to be recovered. He did so, first, through a current known as critical geopolitics. One of the promoters of this movement was Yves Lacoste, French geopolitician who realized the utmost importance that geography had in the development of war conflicts, using the Vietnam War and the Cold War as examples.
The other great exponent of critical geopolitics was Peter Taylor, a British botanist who, likewise, addresses the topic throughout these years and highlights the figure of the political geographer as the expert who should be in charge of geopolitical studies. Since this new birth of the concept of geopolitics, its importance has only grown, especially as a means of analysis for the major conflicts that constantly arise between different countries around the world.
Main authors in this field of study
Geopolitics has developed in very different ways in the various countries where it has been studied and promoted, which is why today we have various authors to rely on when we try to better understand the complexity of this phenomenon. Let’s get to know some of the main ones.
1. Alfred Thayer Mahan
The first author would be Alfred Thayer Mahan, an American. Mahan pointed out the importance of the sea in political relations between countries, and how strategic places should be used to dominate this type of media. In that sense, he established six conditions that a country should meet to control the maritime environment. The first would be to have a geographical position that was already advantageous from the start. The second would talk about having accessible coasts, with climates that facilitate navigation and useful resources.
The third point would be to have a sufficient area of land. The following would refer to having a population level such that it would allow the defense of said land. The fifth point would require that the society have favorable aptitudes to function at sea, and finally it would be necessary that the government of the nation in question itself had an interest in the maritime domain and directed its policies towards this line.
2. Homer Lea
Another author from the USA is Homer Lea. At the beginning of the 20th century, Lea warned of the danger that the Anglo-Saxon nations were facing due to the expansion that neighboring states of Slavic (Russia), Teutonic (Germany) or Japanese origin were carrying out.
Somehow anticipated the movements that were to come throughout the First World War, since he knew how to read political intentions taking into account geographical factors. That is, he carried out one of the first geopolitical studies of which there is evidence.
3. Kissinger and Brzezinski
Kissinger and Brzezinski, US security advisors during the Cold War, They developed the theory of the great chessboard, by which the entire world would resemble this scenario in which there would be some main actors who would constantly fight to control more and more squares, and therefore international policies should be adopted aimed at guaranteeing a balance between the most powerful nuclei, in order to avoid possible future conflicts between them.
They mainly put that weight on Russia, Germany and the United States, stating that the United States should establish alliances in Europe that would prevent a hypothetical convergence between Germany and Russia, which would generate a nucleus of power, called Eurasia, that would be uncontrollable for the rest of the world.
4. Mackinder
Sir Halford Mackinder, British geographer and politician of the late 19th century, was another of the pioneers of geopolitics. His great contribution to this study was the Heartland theory, in an article called “The geographical pivot of history.” According to his analysis, in the central area of the Eurasian continent the conditions were being met for the formation of a gigantic empire.
This conglomeration of nations, thanks to being a huge area of land, would have an advantage over the rest of the nations that had to use maritime transport, much slower and more dangerous, to supply resources and troops to defend each space. The central area of this supposed empire was what Mackinder called Heartland, and would correspond to Ukraine and the westernmost part of Russia
Indeed, these territories represented major disputes between the great powers that faced each other during the two great wars of the last century, knowing that whoever controlled the area would have a great advantage to continue advancing through the rest of the continent and therefore definitively unbalance the balance.
5. Friedrich Ratzel
This German ethnographer and geographer from the second half of the 19th century contributed the concept of biology as a factor of geographical expansion, beyond rigid borders. According to Ratzel, Nations resemble living organisms, and therefore they must continue to grow If, on the other hand, the borders remain static or even decrease, it will mean that the nation is in decline and is in danger of dying.
This theory was criticized for being considered too simplistic, ignoring important factors that explain the power of nations, such as the organization of their own society, for example. Furthermore, these postulates were some of those that the National Socialist movement would later use to design its strategies, as we saw in the previous points, which meant the fall from grace of the concept of geopolitics for several decades.
6. Jacques Ancel
Jacques Ancel was the first French geopolitician. He was a reference on the subject, and he published important studies on the matter before the Second World War devastated Europe.
7. Vadim Tsymbursky
As a representative of the Russian school, Vadim Tsymbursky would be the greatest exponent This researcher made different contributions to geopolitics, coining terms such as the Russia-Island or the Great Limit.
